Greater New Orleans

Racing through Southern Florida

Pam and Jimmy are racing their way from Jacksonville to Orlando in breakneck speed. Hear the latest in scouting out primo book stores and selling out books at a booksigning booth in an international book show.

Pam signing books at ICRS at B&H Booth in Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fl

July 8th - Time does fly when you're having fun. And we are. We actually did visit ten bookstores in Jacksonville before taking Hwy 1-A-1 along the coast toward Daytona Beach. Decided to stay for two nights. This is a spread-out city, so we had to get a city street map to match up the Google sites for the bookstores. I've started double-checking stores that aren't familiar, calling to see what kind of books they specialize in, as that saves some time. Finally worked our way from one side of the city out to the beach area. Everyone we met was great, friendly and seemed interested not only in the book, but also in this (weird?) booktour Jimmy and I are doing.

July 10th - leaving Jacksonville, we stopped for lunch at The Reef on the coast road, half-way between Jacksonville and Daytona Beach. We wanted to have lunch on the beach and we did - The Reef is a small wooden house directly on the sand. So we watched surfers in the Atlantic while we ate lunch, then walked along a small boardwalk over the beach in the sunshine. Blue water, big curling waves, surfers and boogie boarders, stripped umbrellas, vine covered dunes, huge sea-gulls, one followed by a tiny baby one.

Along the way, we stopped at the oldest city in the United States. St. Augustine has (so far as we could tell, ) only one bookstore, a Barnes & Noble,.So we stopped for a visit. Colorful old carousel in the center of town - that's what we're on, Jimmy said. Detoured a bit to Palm Coast which has a wonderful independent bookstore called By The Book. This is an interesting town - don't know how new it is, but everything in it looked like it had just been built. By The Book is a little hard to find because it's inside a square, called European Square--lots of cafes and cute shops.

Daytona Beach - Heaven for Nascar lovers. The raceway on International Speedway Drive is HUGE, and the parking lot was covered with tents for an up-coming event. We had the great idea that we'd stay in a motel on the beach, but not so fast, McBride. The beach was jam packed because of a cheerleader convention. You can imagine, I know. As crowded as Mardi Gras and just as wild. So we got out of there and stayed at a nice quiet place in town. I didn't do my homework for this one - just printed out the Google map and took off from Jacksonville. So a long, long list of bookstores was weeded down to just three - the rest specialized and didn't carry fiction. Oh well - can't win them all.

July 11th - Daytona 500 (?) has nothing on us. We had to get to Gainesville by 1:15 because I had a hair appointment, because we were headed on from Gainesville to Orlando for a big booksigning! 1:15 seems reasonable when you look at the map. But the higways turned out to be two lane roads, lots of slow, slow traffic, and one town running into the next and 35 mph speedlimits. We made it though and Jimmy drove up to the place right on the minute. We stopped at a couple of bookstores before looking for a place to sleep, and let me tell you, Gainesville is one confusing city to drive in. It seemed to us that all of the streets were numbers, and the same numbers turned up in every direction - NW 33rd street, SW 33rd, 33rd Place, 33rd Blvd., etc. Amazing Grace set us spinning.

Jimmy and Pam at Emiliano's Cafe in Gainesville

Emiliano's Cafe in Gainesville is a neat little place that caters to the Florida State crowd--don't mention LSU there! Good food, outdoor cafe, Latin music in the center of an old and picturesque part of town. I had Mediterranean flat bread with black olive tapenade, artichoke hearts, fresh tomato, basil and parm. cheese. Delicious. Jimmy had the Cancun special, smoked turkey on a croisant with roma tomato and a spicy sauce. Live music at night at some of the places on that little street.

July 12th - Thunderstorms all the way from Gainesville to Orlando. I have to say Orlando has more kids in it than any city I've ever seen - but I guess that's what it's all about, n'cest pas? Saturday night Jimmy and I sat with my B&H Publishing Group editor, David Webb, and publicist, Julie Gwinn, and other authors and spouses at the 2008 Christy Awards--a semi-formal dinner and celebration annually honoring the winners of the top Christian fiction awards for the prior year. In attendance at the party were representatives of, in addition to B&H-- Zondervan, Thomas Nelson, NavPress, Moody Publishers, Tyndale, WaterBrook Multnomah, and many other publishing houses, agents, authors, reporters - PW Religion was particularly noted. It was a fun, glitzy night--first time I've attended this event. Karen Ball, a witty, greatly a respected B&H editor and also an author, was a nominee for an award, which is a huge honor. In a discussion on-stage, Karen, along with Carol Johnson of Bethany House Publishers, Dave Lambert, Senior Fiction Editor, Howard Books, and Michelle Rapkin, Executive Editor, Hatchette's Center Street Imprint gave us their views on how the Christian fiction market has changed over the years from genre to a broader category of literature with a Christian world view.

July 14th - Started the day with a wild breakfast at IHOP - I do really mean "wild". It was a new store and jammed packed with children all revved up for WaterWorld and Disney world. Balloons popping all around us, waitress said hold on, she's 'slammed', over and over and over again. At noon we went to the Orange County Convention Hall on International Drive for the International Christian Retail Show. This is one HUGE convention center--it took us an hour just to park and find our way to registration. Thousands of people milling around on the convention floor, with publishing houses represented in brightly colored, lighted booths, book displays, videos, television reporters, radio interview booths, authors signing books, and lots of food. My assignment was to show up at 1:30 for a booksigning at the B&H Booth with fellow author Tracy Higley (TC Higley -- the Seven Wonders of the World Series.) There was a very long line at the booth at 1:30 which was exciting, and we signed books until 2:30 when we ran out of copies. Many, if not most, of the attendees at this event were retail sellers, making the signing really successful! Lots of the B&H family were there, including the sales managers who actually get our books into the stores for us. If you go to the B&H Publishing Group web site - Portal - you'll see some videos from the event.

Dinner tonight with David, Julie, and the other B&H authors who are here. We're looking forward to it. Then back to visiting bookstores, before heading on up the coast. Talk to you soon! Pamela